Rhetoric

8166 Rhetorics of New Media (Gurley): RC-Rm 18
Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity: A Trickster at Work
Rachel Anderson, Grand Valley State University (She is a medievalist doing pop culture. I love it.)

This would have been a live blogging of the session, if I had been able to get an internet connection.

example of tricksterism: Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity

reading signs made her laugh:
“My comedy channel: Fox News
My news channel: Comedy Central”

This rally was held at end of October 2010. Stewart is not an overt political activist? Instead, in his rhetoric and its representations of it at the rally, Stewart speaks as trickster.

Anderson uses Just Gaming as a theory base.

The media response was interesting and so was Stewart’s response to the media.

Stewart is a key figure in (political) popular American culture.

2 modes through use of language:
rally attendees signs (collected by The Huffington Post)
Stewart’s speech

Stewart has been getting into “more serious reporting,” such as in October 2004 when he accused Fox of “hackery.”

He is all about the debate and has a willingness to engage his guests in current issues.

Since 2001 Colbert and Stewart promoted Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Original responses to the announcement of the rally were positive. WSJ quickly said it was a response to Beck’s rally, which is clearly an example of tricksterism.

Stewart himself evaded giving reasons for creating/holding rally.

What is Stewart doing here?
role as trickster
literary and culture trickster = god, goddess, demi-, Loki (as example)

Loki promised ridiculous payment for Asgard on a crazy schedule. Problem is that the giant was able to finish, with help of his horse.
Loki turned himself into a mare and lured the stallion away. Loki then gave birth to an eight-legged horse.

Anderson could not explore the whole ideology of tricksterism, because that would take too much time, since it is a huge area.

2 major concepts:
ruse = retell story, refocus the narrative to enable the audience to see another angle
game of the just = (reading assignment on topic)

The trickster is a consummate game player. The trickster is always trying to figure out new moves. Trying to invent new games.

Justice = reevaluation of moves in a game

“Absolute injustice would occur if the pragmantics of obligation, that is the possibility of continuing to play the game of the just, were excluded. That was unjust.” (Lyotard and Thebaud, Just Gaming 67)

Justice is not an ideal. It’s a space. It’s a space of negotiation, narrative, game-playing.

Stewart is a self-aware trickster. Most clearly expresses this Nov. 19, 2010 during an interview with Rachel Maddow. Several times referenced ideas of “gaming.” “Politics is a Democrat and Republican game.”
He said there is a bigger difference btw folks with kids and without kids (parents/nonparents) than between Dems and Repubs. (Maybe he’s right, too.) By doing this, the trickster Stewart introduces new angle into the game.

He does acknowledge power of politics. Then he delves into the issue of his rally as a political statement.

Does Daily Show function only as entertainment?
He was asked this question in the interview.

His answer included:
“form of me around” “a comedian… who criticizes [politics]”
“[I have] No ability to really do anything”
“The rally was to deflate the bubble… articulate an intangible feeling… say it’s a real feeling… idealistic but it’s impotent…”
“serve the best purpose that I can” in being sardonic

The interchange indicates Stewart’s understanding as his role as trickster. Maddow appears to be pressuring him into a role. Stewart has the feeling (Anderson thinks) that politics is more than a left-right side and that his job as trickster is to create a place btw political streams that is as wide as possible.

Some who attended or participated did not like (in the rally):
lack of directed action
rally’s message unclear?

Fun stuff:
rhetoric of the signs at the rally
then photographed at the rally
posted on fb and The Huffington Post

Some of the signs:
Somewhat Irritated about Extreme Outrage
What do we want? Respectful Discourse. When do we want it? Now would be agreeable to me, but I am interested in your opinion.
Hey Hitler. Give me back my nuance.
One of us or perhaps both of us may be correct
Real patriots can handle a difference in opinion

pi is all the irrationality I need
People who use hyperbole should be shot
God hates signs.
This is a sign.
The people behind me can’t see.
End Road Work.
Only the jesters dare speak the truth.

All of what Stewart does shows the nature of his role of trickster, by keeping the game going. (What game? I am just a bit confused.) The tricksterism lets them–Stewart and Colbert– play the game of the just.

Stewart recognizes, accepts, and embraces his role as Loki-like trickster.

Questions:
How did you get interested in Stewart?
spend lot of time working with Loki, saw Maddow interview, most self-aware expression of tricksterism that I’ve ever heard… got the transcript… analyzed how he was constructing himself in that way.

Is Glenn Beck a trickster? Beck versus Stewart
Is his rally a space to be a game player?
Relatively self-aware. Created persona.
find him amusing when I watch him as a performance

lacks the sense of irony that Stewart does
Stewart intends his audience to read him as ironic.
Beck has less nuance.

Where Stewart was talking to Maddow and calling her out as partisan. Showcasing the places where he thinks the left closes down the debate. He would do either, but the right tends to give him more material. (Bias is clear. There is plenty to whatever.)
Stewart has not spared Obama in the last year. Extremely cynical to Libya. Does not lampoon them quite as effectively.

Doesn’t go out of his way to be balanced. Takes his material where he finds it.

Beck doesn’t want anyone on the field. Stewart is worried about the stadium. Feel as if Beck is generated by an outside force. Stewart is more authentic.

Stewart has managed to outlast most other figures.

Stewart is now doing Beck imitations. Stewart is all the sudden keeping the presence of Glenn Beck around by doing those imitations.

signer people “The Silent Majority” like the 70s
telling the people in the stadium that they are on the field
really loud folks are shutting down the game

refocusing technique to move around power

notion of the troll
troll v. trickster
troll lacks nuance and just wants to irritate
famous personalities that you would now consider trolls
Is the troll an aspect of the trickster?

Other people did not show up:
NASA and New Media: A Study of NASA’s Emergence into Socializing Networks, YouTube, and Apps
Maria Baugh-Horstman, University of Houston – Clear Lake

Wikimemory
Nathan Kuntz, California State University Fullerton

Dr. Peter Rollins wrote, “Thanks for your poetic blogs–which read like imagist poems.”

Because he brought it to mind, here is a wordle of an important sentence from my paper.

I wrote on “Science Fiction and Fantasy’s Representations of Rape: From the Survivor’s Perspective.”

”F*** My Life: The Rhetoric of Micro-autobiographical Narrative”
Dana Anderson, Indiana University

This would have been a live blogging of the session, if I had been able to get an internet connection.

Dana is looking at the intersection of rhetoric and new media.
In general, the purpose in looking at a site like FML is to make study of rhetoric more interesting.

autobiography = prose narrative, 1st person, narrator-protagonist-author all same

Narrative discourse has long been of general interest.
Edward Boothe
James Feelings (sp?)

Autobiography has been mostly ignored.
However, if you look at the best-sellers list, an autobiography is part of every best-seller list each month (year, week, etc)

He presented a list of reasons autobio ought to be interesting, including the fact that these works are the mainstays of the literary and rhetorical classroom from Frederick Douglass to Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).

He said that we should be having students discuss and write literacy narratives (how was it you came into literate practices).

I have actually never heard of this. The closest I have gotten is “what experience do you have in English classes?” I wonder what literacy narratives would read like. I assume that honors narratives would be richer, but is it possible that we could pull from our developmental writing students a depth of reflection on how they read and write and how they have learned to read and write? That is an interesting question that I may have to pursue.

Personally Speaking: Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse (Studies in Writing and Rhetoric) by Candace Spigelman

Dana was thrilled to find FML; it was autobiography and rhetoric together AND the short posts matched his short attention span.

The English-language site was launched in 2008.
The English version was put out by the same person who launched the French 2007 version.
Since then it has been released in lots of other languages.

FML FAQ: weird and wonderful collection on the web, in a few sentences a user can tell what event ruined their day, must start with today, end with FML, be less than 200 words

He is looking at the implications of: size, genre, intention, mediation.

Size: increased size allows for detail, but he has found no relationship between size and power

Genre: autobio much easier to classify as lit, than rhetorical. If rhetoric wants to study and classify autobiography, it would need to define autobio differently than literature does. Possible ways to examine/classify autobiography rhetorically would be:

• clear reliance on past, forensic discourse
• performative takes precedence over reflection= epideictic
• need past-mindedness, present performance aspects

Intention: intention of audiences, what are aud doing when they read? People seem to expect reality. (Duh!) going from readers to judges (critai). What are the intentions?

• audiences want more than truth, want entertainment and education
• particularly true of those written by women in intimacy category
• What is it that we want done to us through our reading of sites like this?

Mediation: all discourse mediated

• aspects other than life story itself factor into telling and reception
• “recipe” for submitting an FML
• mediated by audience expectations

Dana said his overall intention is to offer other rhetorics or rhetorical aspects to examine to academia.

Questions:
teach twitter, hadn’t thought of using FML. Any ideas?

literature and public life teaching that now?

According to the FAQ a clear sense of style is required. There is a review process.

My Life is Average… ?opposite site?
Many people miss the point of this site.
To appreciate My Life is Average, you need people who get irony.

Perhaps a better contrast, a more immediate c/c, could be made with It Made My Day.

The handout included FML texts from last night—usually the texts are both odd and serious.

in-class exercise: Write out one for each section…
difference between irony and parody

Look at the comments on FML- what do you look at with those? Life for a text after the writing. Practices in circulation, repurposed, edited and revised, etc.

What role does autobio play in shaping culture?

EVERYONE comments on FML. Comments are not filtered. Less structured.

People resent the notion that you can be lied to with autobiography.

FML is very competitive… What Mikee said… What was that?

Why would people want to get on FML? Competition involved…
competition
fame and the impulse to fame

More on the line with FML. Anyone can have an fb page, but there is filtering. There is value placed on your life experience. Validated or not validated.

competition and validation…
site Rate My Break Up Line (?something like that) He Said/She Said
whether they think it was true, whether the person deserved to be broken up that way

”Exploring the Phenomenon of Self-Representation and Identity Performance in Social Networking Sites: A Typology of Facebook Profile Pictures”
Macey Freudensprung, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Working on paper at beginning of thesis. Very much in beginning.

This would have been a live blogging of the session, if I had been able to get an internet connection.

interested in performance of social identity
draw on studies of how fb profiles have shifted
communal space, individuals perform a specific self based on previously est social roles and expectations
interested in the pictures

Overview:
background info on history of photography
formulate a framework of the type of photography
brief discussion on neuroscience to explain facts behind my arguments
create a system of categorization (female images(
pleasure and play in images

thesis: systematic order of a semiotic typology of female pictures

Photos were calling cards… trace of the body… gave you agency and power…

Dominant conventions of self-portraiture

Sekula: phot discourse, system of relations
Barthes:
McLuhan

Ways of seeing
Fleckenstein
Gunther Kress
1. make the change to another self or body to be photographs
2. remain in a state of constant awareness in regards of how to attract the attention of the viewers
Tulley: female fb members are fully aware that images are viewd by mass-audiences, choose images that are viewer-friendly and will represent them in an appealing way

Typology of images:
According to Kress =
communicative space
each group shows social relationship
each choice made by awareness of social relationship
each choice creates power through choice

Ellis: When I maintain my fb pg, I select a me to project to the world

Typology:
Mother
–represents herself with a picture of her children instead of one of self

• reason people would do this is more comfortable with this aspect of life
• or aspect of life most comfortable with or most proud of

Professional
–genre of images that display the member as a working woman, career driven

• definitely directs audience’s attitudes.
• semiotic work has been done for the viewers

Party girl
–a genre of images that depicts the female as one who is likely to party and participate in
wild and/or
compromising and/or
vulnerable behaviors

• negative consequences, negative portrayals

Nostalgic
–member chooses older photograph of them in the past
identifying with a previous self

• far beyond “commonsense awareness”
• body that they are consciously trying to reveal

Wife
–genre of married self, wedding pictures mostly

• part of a whole
• possibility of choice is constructed by viewers engagement
• image is engaging with other fb members

Anonymous
–viewer cannot decipher the identity of the female due to a lack of content in the image

• allows for open, non-guided interpretation
• ex: dog, eye, flower, garden
• power of having self available, back

Woman
—simple minimally distracting portraiture of themselves

• female identification
• have and do not have agency at the same time (why not?)
• leaving them open to audience but not limiting their thoughts

self-portraiture without background…

Kress:
semiotically an exhibition is a relationship
pedagogically an exhibition is an effect?

pleasure and play:
not a lot of research on images, research has been all done on text
talk about the idea that the members play with the viewers and the viewers play back

Hum: certain online performances may be not be equally enjoyed by the viewer

conclusion: by selecting a fb picture, literally “playing” a role in constructing their identitities according to social, cultural, and xxx expectations

Questions:

?grandmother
?comic character
?changing images of same fb folks

hint at rhetorical strategy—picture is not preserving a moment, it is for creating a fb, change in technology changes rhetoric of picture in terms of immediacy versus holding on to something…
How does that go into our everyday lives?

albums, taking pics to go online, not trip preservation, but so I can say something about myself

developing more into source of ego and self-aggrandizement, want to project image, mention earlier… how do you feel about image shifting and sniffing? deconstruction of self, myriad of presentations of self, politics of choice… choice allows deconstruction to happen on a personal level

focus on females “perfectly fine” Why just females? Started to do both. Not male. When I started… my first profile picture. Why did I pick this picture? asked people… couldn’t figure out reasoning behind men picking their pictures

8165 Rhetorics of New Media (Gurley): RC-Rm 18

Exploring the Phenomenon of Self-Representation and Identity Performance in
Social Networking Sites: A Typology of Facebook Profile Pictures
Macey Freudensprung, The University of Texas at San Antonio

F*** My Life: The Rhetoric of Micro-autobiographical Narrative
Dana Anderson, Indiana University

These two people were not here.
Identity Crisis: Incorporating Social Networking into the Composition Classroom
Jillian Bohle, Washington State University

The Rhetoric of the Node
Phil Gochenour, Towson University

I learned this from Shuwen Li, lately of UofA, Little Rock and soon to be of UMinn.

Ethos:

Logos:

Pathos:

Logos AND Pathos:

One book, three appeals.

Use it to teach freshmen.

Understanding Visual Argumentation
Shuwen Li, presently at University of Arkansas-Little Rock, but she will be in the PhD rhetoric/technical/scientific program at University of Minnesota beginning in the fall.

This is a live blogging of the session.

Pre-presentation:
I was a bit intrigued/concerned. Li is going to be presenting on this topic at SCMLA, in a panel for which I am chair/organizer. I realize that people give the same presentation at multiple genres, but the overlap of audience at PCA and SCMLA, especially as PCA is in Texas this year, will be significant.

Having talked to her about her presentation though, I am happy to report that she is going to be presenting the theoretical ideas (at PCA) behind the practical techniques of employing visual argumentation within technical communications/writing courses (at SCMLA).

Presentation:
Interesting visual to start. Fve guys hanging from a clothesline, eating watermelon, with the number 5 after them. Browns and oranges primarily. imayday

Then the computer disconnected again. This will be a problem. She is relying on the tech significantly because of her topic (as she should, I think).

Picture of little girl and a pony yelling at each other.

born in a culture of images, not sounds

as a child I started learning words with individual pictures
“learning words” taking pictures with a single word

comic strips (no words)

child’s drawing (very elaborate, but no words)

In tech writing, started thinking about the tension between words and pictures.

1996 criticized
same year someone else

10 years later other two people proposed modes for visual meaning and themes for visual argumentation

era of computer tech, people communicate with visuals

What are differences between visual and verbal argumentation?
verbal can use visuals, but not main argument
visual =

Visuals
are indeterminate
are unable to construct argument
cannot negate.

visual argument: claim-support pattern
-quotes, but they were too intricate for me to copy and even to understand. Clear speaking, but quiet. There’s a mic, but—as happened often—people don’t know how to use them effectively.

Claim-support
vodka ad, “Add vodka.”
Vodka bottle pouring onto a sleepy city.
Idea that vodka will “wake up” your life.

Visuals are able to refute.
Blackfeet triangular pattern
Christian flower pattern
Blackfeet used flower, but to keep their cultural heritage, also included the triangular pattern.
Not sure how this refutes. Instead it seems that it is contestation, not negation.

Cultural symbols?
1. emotional appeal
2. psychological appeal
3. quick revelation of the thought pattern of the author of the image

Visuals’ application of rhetorical figure:
metaphor
irony image= guy in white taking picture of women in burkas, covered totally
personification = two chairs, “People in Love”
XXX=white raven in a group of black ravens “Hamlet”

For me, visuals last longer than words.

Visual arg: persuasion or psych manipulation or what?
How much control do audiences have of visual argumentation?

Interesting question and I would really like to think about this. Some say that the audience is significantly involved in the ads. I am not sure about that either. Visuals can make the audience think. Of course, that assumes that the audience thinks at all. I’m sure that many people do not. I taught my sons’ visual rhetoric as a representation, claim-support argument, all their lives. Which means that I have a philosophical and deep basis in the discussion on visual rhetoric. Which I did not realize. Interesting.

privacy, orange background, thinker, speaking bubble, mousetrap caught on the bubble

Appeals can be used in visual rhetoric:
pathos, An Inconvenient Truth with polar bear

ethos, An Inconvenient Truth with Gore on front

logos, An Inconvenient Truth with an industrial plant spewing pollution

Audience
Focuses on symbols that add argument and dissonance.
Can construct arguments.
Rely on their understanding, individual judgment.

Reconfiguring “Visual Rhetoric” for Technical Writing
Carlos Salinas, University of Texas-El Paso

This is a live blogging of the session.

Pre-presentation:
Salinas and I discussed the “floodgates” of attendees from PCA who would NOT be coming to the presentation. I told him that I thought that the title of tech comm. was off putting to some. He agreed, listing off groups where techies would be: gaming, cinema, etc. I said I thought the facebook paper would be intriguing to folks and he suggested perhaps we should add “social media” to the title. I think that would work next year. …I’ll have to think about how I use social media in my tech writing classroom so I can submit.

Presentation:
Most of what I am going to talk about… I am going to read to you…. Read for 10 or 15 minutes and then a couple of things to show you.

What I am reading to you: arguing that there is a problem with the term visual rhetoric
tend to think of visual images as representations, as illustrations, as displays
should be thinking of them as heuristics or presentations

Images are important to English studies.
Literary and media critics look at paintings and photographs, movies, etc.
Political, social, and cultural systems have also been looked at. Icons, etc
Verbal imagery long study for rhetoric and poets
Visual perception and thinking studied by psych folks

Visual rhetoric

Increasingly rely on images
preferred mode of communication

JT Crest
Cindy Stone

tech change in image

Why is the image at issue? What is at issue for whom?
Rhet and comp, cultural studies, tech studies = visual rhetoric

Visual rhetoric problems:
terminologically unwieldy
forces us to re-examine (domains, terms, theories, practices)

Hill and Helmers’ argument:
Defining Visual Rhetorics
(a collection of essays)
by Hill and Helmers

H&H want individual scholars to present their own definitions.

Folks want studies, not long definitions.
(And he said “I’m giving lengthy definition.” lol)

Visual rhetoric:
structure
credibility
definition

suggest should be less-structured, incoherence, kairos

H&H disciplinary conventions constrain by boundaries and lack of acceptance
it may be too soon to settle on an accepted practice

word privileged over image to point where words and pictures are divided
Every person submitting to the essays said they cannot be divided so clearly. Discourse is used to respond to and interpret images.

Salinas’ plan:
Problematize or re-problematize visual rhetoric.
Discuss the production of images.

Look at a particular image, one of the oldest in existence:
Image of cave painting from the caves in France

Used a teeny tiny image. It’s a thumbnail. I have no idea what part of the cave painting it is. I taught those cave paintings this semester, so I ought to be able to recognize it, but I can’t.

1. We need to talk about it.
2. Conference that claimed image was visual rhetoric. I doubted that the cave painters were thinking about rhetoric.

Problematized:
How can a cave painting be an example of visual rhetoric?
You can examine it in terms of rhetoric, but was rhetoric used in its creation?
I can argue about what it says now, what I think the frame is, how I think it influenced/spoke to its original audience, an interpretation frame…
But all these critical approaches concentrate on analysis, not production.

From our time, we can see this as visual rhetoric. But doubtful that the creators thought of/used visual rhetoric.

I think that they may indeed have intended visual rhetoric.

Sullivan and Porter in Opening Spaces and others…
Write about mapping as a rhetorical way of scholarship
Mapping uses visual material, but is not meant to be a representation of a process. Seeks to portray theories, fields, definitions, disciplinary boundaries, ideologies…. Maps work heuristically. They are used to start, but are not the thing itself. Maps encourage heuristics and can be revised. Visual and spatial, though some say can involve (or should involve) time.
To the extent that the map is meant to be interpreted, the interpretation is often presented in words.
EX: stasis theory

Tech difficulties. The screen isn’t working for the computer.

Images: “How our laws are made” a map in orange, blue, green, yellow, with a light green background… How bill becomes a law. … Color to represent stages… A complex map, but still a representation, not a heuristic map.

Edward Tuffney’s (web says Charles Minard’s) famous map of Napoleon’s march, but still a representation, but not a heuristic.

Student sample of a heuristic map: “What the material was about” with metaphor of a chemical compound
Mapping the dominance of scientific discourse, with various different fields and various different methodologies.

The student used the map as a starting point to clarify thinking and presentation.
It is a presentation or heuristic of the student’s understanding of this field, ideology, …

Questions:
Graphic was small. Listserv was where cave painting pic came from.

What am I looking for if I am looking at heuristic versus representation?

respresentation: re-presents, an illustration, a diagram

heuristic: starting point, way of articulating what our thinking is, meant to be the invention of argument

Read in an article, about Archimedes, abstract geometry of Greeks… Puts us into abstract thinking… What Archimedes would do, was he would talk about his mathematical ideas on his belly. “This given point A” was a way to spark his thinking… He wasn’t talking about his belly… but the mathematic… Abstract becomes very concrete.

Metaphor is a way to take an abstract thought and give it concrete.

Did the cave painting serve as a heuristic to prompt you to think about visual rhetoric?
Think about idea maps, outlines, tree, mindmaps… Meant to initiate start thinking…

A great resource for teaching visual rhetoric is Duke University’s AdViews.

AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. These commercials were created or collected by the ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B). Founded in 1929, Benton & Bowles was a New York advertising agency that merged with D’Arcy Masius McManus in 1985 to form DMB&B. Major clients included are Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Schick, Vicks, and Post, among others.

Related interviews are available.